


Lackadaisy Undoing

by handful_ofdust



Category: Lackadaisy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Anti-Semitism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 17:23:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2356442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handful_ofdust/pseuds/handful_ofdust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had to happen sometime: Mordecai Heller gets in over his head. Luckily, while he thinks of himself as a man with no friends, his friends don't know that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath._ — _Book of Esther_ , 3:2.

  
Though, to his almost-eternal regret, Mordecai Heller wasn't really “ready” when they came for him—he was sipping a second cup of tea, to be exact, in the little shop he'd been foolishly comfortable enough to drift into making part of what a man in his profession should never, under any circumstances, cultivate, ie _a routine_ —he was happy in retrospect to note how quickly he _became_ ready, without even noticing it: Caught a flash from the corner of his eye whose dull grey fairly shouted “gun-barrel” and kicked out with both feet, sending his chair back one way, his table the other.

  
So even as the rifle-bullets pocked through the place where his head used to be, he was already rolling up onto his knees, twitching the flaps of his jacket back like tails and cross-drawing; with no time to unbutton he heard things pop and skitter, which was annoying but bearable for now, in context. He'd discuss it with his tailor after, if there was one.

  
One over his shoulder, back towards the front door—that much was obvious. But you didn't go after a man with only _one_. Viktor Vasko had taught him that, years earlier, though even at the time, it'd simply seemed logical. So he let fly, but only speculatively—spend a bullet to reap a target, or two...

  
Three, it turned out. And _that_ was awkward, especially when the second had a shotgun whose blast Mordecai barely managed to avoid, while the third turned out to have a BAR that sprayed glass, tea, wood and fragments everywhere, one of which promptly embedded itself in Mordecai's side: Upper hip/lower back sort of area, someplace he couldn't even check without a mirror. Thus no immediate way to tell if it was a graze or an actual puncture, through-and-through or something worth getting a doctor to dig around in it with callipers—

  
—none of which mattered so very much right now, anyways, because here they came. Flocking in all at once to fight each other over the chance to get a piece of him, instead of just hanging back and playing fish in a barrel—a sucker's play, almost aggressively stupid, but useful. Like most mistakes.

  
( _There's a good side to being hated, son,_ Atlas May had told him, almost as long ago, _as I'm sure your people well know—hate's only a hair away from fear, after all, though most never develop the palate to tell the taste of one from t'other. And fear kills._ )

  
Thus comforted by his former employer's wisdom, Mordecai played possum, much as it irked him to identify himself with such a disgustingly aggregate animal; let them think he was too wounded to do more than flop, face-down, and allowed them to draw close enough for him to catch snatches of what they were yammering back and forth about: All _Heard that Jew was tough!_ on the one hand and _Yeah, well, killin' Christ is one thing...this here's St. Louis_ on the other. Quickly followed by: _Hell, I don't mind—rather make three thousand easy than hard, any damn day of the week..._

  
_You mean a thousand, don't ya? One for me, one for you, one for him—_

  
_Heh, yeah: A thousand for him, five hundred for his bookie, three for that gal he got up at Aunt Sally's..._

  
_Shut your damn mouth, McNally! You ain't the boss of what I do with my share!_

  
_What? Y'mean_ who _, don't ya?_

  
As, meanwhile: _Three thousand?_ Mordecai thought, feeling wetness spread and cool, suddenly unsure if his legs would bear him when he sprang back up again. _But...on those Wanted posters, the reward was...$1,500, for information leading to the capture of Elijah Metzger (possibly an alias). Which means someone's matching it, exactly..._

  
A good gambit, in terms of roping in trigger-men, chatty or otherwise. And one which Mitzi May, with what little of everything she had left still sunk deep as it would go into the Lackadaisy, couldn't possibly afford—she didn't have a hundred to rub together, let alone three thousand, even if she knew she'd get half of it back. The which realization Mordecai found...oddly heartening, for reasons he didn't feel like examining in closer detail, right now.

  
One of them kicked him over, boot bruising his ribs, only to take a shot straight up through his jaw and out the top of his skull. When Number Two—McNally?—saw what had happened, he spent a bit too much time gaping to take advantage of it; Mordecai's finger tightened on the other trigger once, twice, three times as he rolled again, punching him through belly, chest and neck on the way up, while simultaneously hooking the back of Number Three's knee with his shoe. Number Three went tumbling, body one way, BAR the other, and Mordecai ended up standing with one shoe on the assassin's throat, watching his own blood spot the shiny leather as he kept an only slightly wavering bead on the man's right temple.

  
He felt short of breath, cold and hot at once, soaked with what he hoped was sweat rather than a slow bleed. His chest tightened, as though everything inside him were congealing.

  
“How many more of you?” He demanded, to which the man beneath him laughed nastily, if a shade hysterically. Replying—

  
“ _Everybody_ , kike. Every damn body.”

  
“This isn't really the sort of information worth keeping someone alive for,” Mordecai remarked, and began to squeeze the trigger. Which at least seemed to sober the fool up, and fast; he threw both hands in the air, pleading: “No, no! I...I'm sorry, all right? Caught me off guard.”

  
“Whose fault is that?”

  
“Man, you never stop, do ya?” As Mordecai's finger tightened again: “ _Look!_ I just—we needed the money, okay? Like you do. You can understand.”

  
“Who paid you?”

  
“Nobody, yet. Word just got around.”

  
“Who were you going to collect from, then?”

  
“Uh...I think...McNally knew. So ya probably shouldn't've killed him, huh?”

  
Probably not. But in a lifetime of decisions made under pressure, Mordecai felt he could, at least, learn to live with this one.

  
His arm juddered, almost freezing up, and he responded by bringing the gun just a hair further towards dead-centre on the man's forehead, setting his teeth. While: “Wait, wait!” The man squawked, one more time. Then: “I...just gotta know...you really have a bullet in your head? Is _that_ why you're—”

  
(So good? So bad? So crazy? So— _you_?)

  
“If I had a _bullet_ in my head, I'd be dead,” Mordecai replied, grimly. And demonstrated.


	2. Chapter 2

_The night before:_

  
That Mordecai still came and went like a ghost was no surprise to Viktor in and of itself, even now they were officially “talking to” each other once more. Nevertheless, it did make for some interesting moments, as when he opened his eye to find Mordecai already in bed with him—propped up on one elbow, nude but for his spectacles and that fierce little frown, as though he'd spent at least an hour watching Viktor sleep while tallying up the ways he'd been doing it wrong.

  
Unimpressed, Viktor made a grumpy attempt at a stretch, soon defeated by his own aching limbs, and demanded: “Vhere haf you been?”

  
Mordecai blinked. “When, exactly?”

  
“Vhen you tink? First you here every night, and then...I don't see you for four, five days, almost veek, and you don't send vord. I vorry.”

  
“Well, you can stop it: I'm fine, just like always. Don't work yourself up.”

  
“Haow? For all I know, vhenever you gone so long, you could be sick, in jail, dead—”

  
“Such _narrishkheit!_ Really, Viktor, you're starting to sound like an old woman; I was doing my _job_ , same as you, like always. Though if you'd retired when I advised you to, instead of stumping on half-blind, with two bad knees...” A snort. “...well, going by this particular conversation, you'd probably be in even worse straits then you already are. Still, you can't say I didn't try.”

  
Viktor made a snarling noise, while the kneecap he could still feel Mordecai's gun against shivered reflexively, as if kicked. “Try to _cripple_ me, yah. Too bad I'm so stubborn it don't vork.”

  
“Yes, we can certainly both agree on that. But since I'm here _now_...”

  
And then he was kissing Viktor, briskly, tongue delving deep—pushing him as far down as differences in weight would allow for, all the while prolonging the embrace hard enough to shut them both up, at least temporarily. Which Viktor went along with, as Mordecai had no doubt calculated he would; to do so was worth it, always, in his opinion. Especially when it led to things like—

  
—Mordecai wrestling them both into place with himself still on top, helping Viktor feed himself inside an inch at a time, panting a bit at the burn of it, sharp enough to draw sweat. Then purring instead, helpless, as Viktor bit and sucked his way from one nipple to the other, letting gravity work its will; soon he was deep enough to feel his pelvic ridge start to bruise and wild enough not to care how much his joints would protest if he flipped them over and rose up tall in the saddle, forcing Mordecai's slim hips apart in ways they shouldn't've been able to bend. Then pounded down into him until they both reached their climax, with a general snarling, clawing, biting rush of mess and frenzy.

  
Mere moments later, Viktor collapsed, headlong—just couldn't help himself (gravity again, giving and taking away, like all physical laws), though he tried his best to roll free before impact—while Mordecai, only slightly squished, hissed briefly, but didn't complain. After which they lay in an amicably slack sprawl for some long time, hands still knit and skin slow-drying, 'till sleep overtook them...Viktor, anyhow.

  
In the morning Mordecai was gone again, as Viktor had suspected he would be. And maybe because of the conversation they'd just had, it took him longer than ever before to get to the point where he finally realized it could be possible, contrary to all his brave claims, that Mordecai really might _not_ be coming back, this time. At all.

  
( _Ever._ )


	3. Chapter 3

Behind that one small shop across from the Maribel Hotel, Mordecai stood at the alley's end a long moment, shivering, the shock of his wound having long since knocked whatever cover his coat should have given him all to hell. It had started raining almost the very minute he'd left his no-longer-favourite teashop, and hadn't paused yet. Now he'd developed an annoying sniffle, and his pince-nez were so irretrievably misted over that he could barely see his own watch-face. Under normal circumstances, just the tick of the watch itself—steady, repetitious, precise—would provide some sort of comfort. But these were hardly normal circumstances...

  
No, hardly. Especially so since, as it only now occurred to him, Mordecai hadn't really seen “normal” for over a year, at the very least.

  
 _And how are we reckoning, exactly?_ His brain asked him, annoyingly calm. _Oh yes, that's right: Pretty much from the moment you fired a bullet into Viktor Vasko's knee, then walked away, leaving him yelling about how he was going to_ kill you next time I see you, Mordecai! _at your back._

  
Flipping the watch shut and fisting his hands in his pockets, Mordecai told that voice to shut up, firmly. Which didn't help even one bit, as he'd somehow known it probably wouldn't.

  
It was his long-dormant bookkeeper's instincts, Mordecai supposed, waking up from their reborn-as-a- jumped-up-thug nap. Things simply had to be juggled 'til they balanced, but if he didn't have nearly enough information to make a real stab at analysis (which he didn't, clearly), the best thing—the only thing—was to gain distance. To get himself someplace “safe”, always assuming there was such a thing, and stay there 'till he could wait this out before trying again, with better information.

  
 _Viktor,_ somewhere very much not his brain suggested, almost sadly. But: _NO,_ his brain replied, overly stern maybe, yet not exactly incorrect. Because that was...a bad idea, even more so than his initial impulse to send the Savoys some sort of surreptitious S.O.S.; whatever marginal amusement value he might now have for them set aside, they were both admirably practical animals, unlikely to risk themselves for nothing but pure goodwill, or even the lure of a second drunken bedroom go-'round. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise him overly if they already knew about the $3000, and were looking to collect it themselves...

  
 _Viktor wouldn't do that, though,_ the same below-the-belt “voice” whispered. Which was certainly true, so far as that went; though a classic misanthrope in most matters, once Viktor gave his loyalty, it was never withdrawn, no matter the consequences. As both of them knew all too well.

And here there came a strung-together flash of disparate moments, all those times he'd performed surreptitious surveillance on his no-longer-former partner, over the last twelve or so months—those times they'd almost met again by accident, up to and including that still startlingly recent night when he'd plundered Lackadaisy's gun-storage room; Viktor had passed with a literal arm's reach of him, so close he'd paused in mid-limp to sniff the air, as though he'd caught a trace of Mordecai's pomade. Then gone on, not looking back, while Mordecai crouched there with his heart hammering, slowly relinquishing his grip on the weapon he'd brought with him.

  
The fierceness with which he'd missed Viktor during their...separation would never cease to bother him, probably; even now, with that rift supposedly re-sutured, it was frustrating, improbable, inexplicable. A scar he still found himself picking at constantly, perhaps in hopes it would never fully heal.

  
 _Pap, that's all it is,_ he thought, grimly, baring his teeth into the wet wind. _Froth, foolishness, sheer_ schmaltz. _Never took you for one of those_ sentimental _types, Mister Heller, you with your careful double-ledger system account-keeping, your well-oiled clockwork soul..._

  
Yes, yes. And yet—this was the truth, also: A year ago, he wouldn't have been standing here drenched, skin-soaked and shivering, carrying on whole conversations without ever opening his mouth. Instead, he would've simply gone wherever he thought Viktor most likely to be, and stayed there.

  
He couldn't do that now, however, because doing so would lead directly to Viktor trying to protect him, as always, leading in turn to a wide range of potential outcomes, all equally bad: A beating from the cops, prison, death row. One way or the other, Viktor would try to help him, and fail, thus leaving Mordecai responsible for having gotten him killed, as well as crippled. And for all that it would undoubtedly be the huge fool's fault, if so—he frankly couldn't see it happening any other way—Mordecai was nevertheless forced, in all honesty, to admit to a good deal of annoyance at the prospect.

  
 _You haf been reckless, Mordecai,_ Viktor's voice told him, half-memory, half imagination. _You vill get in trouble._

  
To which Mordecai heard himself snap back, internally: _Oh? But you see, I already_ am _in trouble, you immense oaf, so...so there. How do you like_ those _apples?_

  
( _That_ was telling him.)

  
Current hallucination over and done with, therefore, he strode decisively forwards, slipping in through the back door, which clattered to behind him. The shopkeeper looked 'round, eyes immediately twice their usual size; Mordecai brushed past his own urge to snarl at him, instead rapping out—

  
“You know who I am?”

  
“Yuh...yessir, Mister Heller.”

  
“Then you've probably some idea why I'm here, I take it. But if not: I need to use the private line. Mister _Sweet_ 's private line.”

  
The man nodded, twitching towards that closet-sized hole he called an office. “It's, uh...in there.”

  
“Good.” Mordecai fixed him with Glare Number Three, extra-strength (patent pending). And suggested, as he did: “I wouldn't go anywhere.”

  
“...'course not.”

  
The phone, once picked up, rang and rang, belaying the Maribel switchboard's vaunted efficiency. Mordecai resisted the urge to drum his fingers, not particularly wanting to touch—well, anything, in here. Eventually, just as he was about to slam the receiver back down, Asa Sweet's familiar “charming” wheeze came on at last, a running-to-fat man's idea of verbal calisthenics. Drawling, as it did: “Morning, or maybe afternoon—hard to tell, with all that cloud cover. This here's Asa Sweet. And you are?”

  
“On the run, Mister Sweet. Bleeding from my back. Worth $3,000, apparently—alive or dead, one assumes, though the general emphasis so far has definitely been on 'dead'. So naturally I thought of you, fount of all information in this town that you claim to be, with fingers in every pie; I don't suppose you'd happen to know anything pertinent to my situation, would you?”

  
He heard Asa draw breath, not quite a gasp, then audibly smooth himself back out, pouring on the honey. “...well, hello there, son. As it happens, I've been waitin' on your call—but you see, I'm sorta engaged, right this very moment. Care to check back in a few?”

  
“Given what I had to do to get _here_ , not really, no. Engaged how?”

  
“Oh, this 'n' that. You looked outside today?”

  
“Looked...? I've _been_ outside, for some time, if that's what you—”

  
But it wasn't, obviously, and Mordecai well knew it. No window in the “office”, so he craned his head sidelong, peering out through the shop's waterlogged front window. Saw the Maribel, all its lights lit and its banners flapping, its fourteen storeys a ridiculously elaborate wedding-cake advertisement for the Marigold below, legal business piled on top of illegal; the street, more crammed than usual with Henry Ford's finest product, a truck or two—no, make that a very specific _sort_ of truck, two or even three Black Mariahs, surrounded by a general moil of hard men in suits with their shotguns racked, flappers and sots being pushed inside in knots by blue uniforms in dripping raincoats...

  
Oh, and _that_ wasn't good. Any of it.

  
“Unwelcome guests, from what I gather,” Mordecai said, carefully. “A raid. Alcohol and Tobacco?”

  
“That's right.”

  
“So—not someplace I'd be welcome, really, right about now. Given my line of work.”

  
“Sadly, no. Y'all keep yourself well, though, and I'm sure we can work somethin' out later.”

  
Mordecai wasn't sure of that at all, obviously, but knew better than push the point. So—

  
“Yes,” he agreed, tonelessly. And let the receiver click to.

  
Emerging from the “office” after a few frantic seconds' de-grooming—coat reversed and shoulder-holsters dumped, hat shoved unceremoniously down the back of his pants along with one of his guns, which nuzzled his spine's hollow while the other weighted down one gartered sock, hair mussed high and his pince-nez stowed gingerly way in an exterior-turned-interior pocket—Mordecai squinted around for the shopkeeper, who he didn't find, and hadn't expected to. With one hand steady on the wall, therefore, he eked back the same way he'd come before suddenly wheeling to slam the door back open, poised to run—

  
(a thing he hated passionately to do, always had, unless there was no choice, which there very much wasn't)

  
—only to stop almost in mid-lunge, confronted as he found himself by two of the very same Prohibition agents he'd just been watching: One taller, broader, probably Irish, with that usual lawman's idiot bruiser grin, the other smaller, sleeker—Italian? That seemed unlikely, but he certainly had the look—with an unlit pipe held loose in one hand, like some dime-store Sherlock Holmes.

  
 _Can I help you?_ He considered asking in Old Mordecai's voice, the one he barely remembered anymore—from New York, before, when all he did was sit in the corner and pray nobody noticed him as he added, subtracted, divided, multiplied. Tracked other people's money, hid it, sent it scurrying all over the city he'd once called his own, like rats. He'd been good at it, once, that voice; soft and polite, unobtrusive, edge-of-innocent. A sad parody of his mother's, really, though he'd never intended it as insult, or even satire...

  
But then he met the smaller one's eyes, and realized that wouldn't do at all, just judging from their angle. Because the one thing he'd utterly neglected to do in his hastily-improvised attempt at a disguise, he only now realized, was to remove the fresh new marigold from his suit-jacket's boutonniere.

  
 _Forgot to take off my gloves, too,_ Mordecai thought, numbly. Then: _Oh,_ goyisher kopf.

  
“Hey boss, that's him, ain't it? The Fighting—”

  
“—gentleman of Semitic extraction? Yes, looks like.” To Mordecai: “My name is Drago, Mister Heller...or do you prefer Metzger? Goldberg?”

  
No point in pretending. “Heller will do,” Mordecai said, fitting his spectacles back on and wincing as both of them rushed suddenly into focus—especially that other agent, who was twice as ugly as he'd seemed with them off, and already starting to crack his knuckles in anticipation. “Am I under arrest?”

  
“Soon enough, I'm afraid.” Drago peered closer, looking almost sympathetic. “You seem as though you've had a rough day, thus far.”

  
“No rougher than anyone else out there, I suppose.” Automatically, his hand fluttered towards his waistcoat, feeling for his watch, only to be arrested mid-motion by the bruiser's mitt. Startled, Mordecai turned on him, not quite able to stop himself from hissing; the bruiser's other fist went back, freezing as Agent Drago laid a calming hand on his shoulder.

  
“No need for that,” he assured him. Then, to Mordecai again: “You understand why we're cautious, don't you, given your reputation? But you really _don't_ want to shoot a Federal agent, no matter what liberties might get taken, believe you me—it causes no end of trouble.”

  
“What makes you think I was going to—?”

  
“'Cause we know _all about you,_ buddy, that's how,” Agent O'Moron put in, before Drago could stop him. “You ain't no mystery. Just a New York Jew with a couple of German guns, and a rap sheet the size of my arm.”

  
Mordecai blinked at him. “Unlikely,” he said.

  
“Think you're pretty funny, huh, Sheeny? Well, wait 'til we get you all nice and booked—extradition's automatic these days, on Prohi offenses. And you know what they got in New York, right? The Chair.”

  
At that, Mordecai's otherwise cold heart surprised him by jumping like a fish, sharp enough to knock itself half-cocked on the inside of his ribs. But if either man expected more from him on the outside than a slight narrowing of the eyes, they were going to be bitterly disappointed. _I'll make you kill me first,_ he thought, but didn't say, allowing his other hand to inch up under his coat-sleeve by slight degrees, 'til the fingers folded so far he could almost— _almost_ —touch his own wrist.

  
Luckily, Drago seemed momentarily more concerned with his partner's posturing than with anything Mordecai might be doing. “That's more than enough of that, Lohan,” he sighed. “I'm sure Mister Heller wants to cooperate.”

  
“Oh, I ain't too sure about _that,_ at all—”

  
“Yes, well, let's just pretend otherwise, shall we? Now, if you could perhaps be persuaded to get out your handcuffs, before any of us get much older...”

  
Lohan twitched the irons in question from his belt, snapping one cuff open with a flourish. At the same time, however, Mordecai turned his prisoned hand 'til he felt the agent's thumb give way, and used the resultant struggle to bring up that switchblade Viktor had given him back in '21. He cut crosswise down Lohan's inner forearm at a neat forty-five degree angle, making it spurt bright enough that Drago grabbed on tight, like anyone afflicted with basic human empathy supposedly would.

  
Thin yells chased after Mordecai as he slipped between them, taking the alley's corner so fast he almost skidded: A general yammer of _Oh, what the hell—Lohan, goddamnit, how many times do I have to tell you, you_ don't taunt the collar—, followed by _Sorry boss, shit, just please DON'T LET GO—_

  
( _They should hire less men for muscle and more men for brains, if they want to keep up,_ he thought, feeling vaguely offended on Drago's behalf. But then again, if they did, it simply would make his job that much harder, wouldn't it? So—just as well, really.)

  
Thinking, at the same time: _My head, my side. Is that blood, again? Did something...rip, just then? Should I worry?_

  
( _You don't come, nearly a veek. I vorry._ )

  
“Don't be an old woman,” he whispered to himself, knowing there was no point in waiting to find out. Besides which, all he could suppose in the end was that Drago indeed chose not to let Lohan bleed out after all, strong as the temptation to do so must've been, and that neither of them thought to use their free hands to go for their guns, in the interim. Because when Mordecai slammed up hard against the nearest cop-car's door, hooked the guy inside in the jaw through the open window, pulled it open to push him out then floored it, he left everything behind in the same hot grind of gears: Drago, Lohan, the Maribel, the cops. Everything.

  
He drove aimlessly, nothing on his mind except the vague idea of getting out of town as quickly as possible, 'til it all became equally tight and dim, winking out like a shot bulb. Came to in a ditch who knew how long later with his head still bruised from the steering wheel, and oh, that wasn't good, either. Perhaps he'd already lost more blood than he'd thought.

  
The stitch in his side pulled tighter, distracting him from the wound on his lower back, the ache of both calves as he stomped down the road, coat flapping shamefully, shoes ankle-deep in mud. Felt the touch of fever, prickly heat all up and down him, rain misting his pince-nez 'til they fogged intolerably, already-wrecked hat-brim plastered and sagging; he fell to counting his scars to distract himself, then Viktor's. Then began to forget whose belonged to who, aside from the very obvious...

  
_Get inside, fool. Get shelter, water, someplace to lie down, before you pass out (again). Food doesn't matter. Wait it out. Wait it out._

  
Pain he could take, always: It was, if not a friend, at least a well-known quantity. But this awful meandering, this wandering—his clockwork brains whirring to, sludged and jumpy, one oh-so-precious cog at a time—

  
 _Wait it...out..._ he thought once more, teeth all a-chatter, dice shook in a box. And kept on going, one wavering step at a time, until the darkness in front of him ate everything.


End file.
